Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look inside North Korea

As North Korea's State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.

North Korea Undercover: Inside the World's Most Secret State

North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

North Korea is today one of the last bastions of hard-line Communism. Its leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party regime, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.

Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped - but Shin Dong-hyuk did.

The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia

Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

In Order to Live is the story of Yeonmi Park's struggle to survive in the darkest, most repressive country on earth; her harrowing escape to South Korea through China's underworld of smugglers and human traffickers; and her emergence as a leading human rights activist - all before her 21st birthday.

Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom

Born in 1970s North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household - her parents worked in the factories, and the family scraped by on rations. Nightly she bowed to her photo of Kim Il-Sung. It was the beginning of a chaotic period with a decade-long famine. Jang married an abusive man who sold their baby. She left him and went home to help her family by illegally crossing the river to China to trade goods. She was caught and imprisoned twice.

A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea

Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child, Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the countrywide famine escalated. By the time she was 11 years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun too was in danger of starving. Finally her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister.

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world's most ruthless and secretive dictatorships - and the story of one woman's terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom....

Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea

Not Forgotten is a modern story of intrigue, suspense, and heart. Driven by his passion to help the people of North Korea, Bae moves to neighboring China to lead guided tours into the secretive nation. Six years later, after 18 successful excursions in and out of the country, Ken is suddenly stopped at the border: He inadvertently brought his hard drive, which reveals the true nature of his visits, to customs. He is arrested, brought to Pyongyang for further questioning, and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. His crime? Attempting to overthrow the North Korean government.

The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom

In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times best-selling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception - and escape.

North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society

One of the least understood countries in the world, North Korea has long been known for its repressive regime. Yet it is far from being an impenetrable black box. Media flows covertly into the country, and fault lines are appearing in the government's sealed informational borders. Drawing on deeply personal interviews with North Korean defectors from all walks of life, ranging from propaganda artists to diplomats, Jieun Baek tells the story of North Korea's information underground.

Under the Same Sky: From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America

A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage.

Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il

No country is as misunderstood as North Korea, and no modern tyrant has remained more mysterious than the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Now, celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice pulls back the curtain to expose the life story of the "Incarnation of Love and Morality". Taken directly from books spirited out of Pyongyang, Dear Reader is a carefully reconstructed first-person account of the man behind the mythology.

Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).

My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth

In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it's never been seen before. Even though it's the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border. But Wendy's initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia.

The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel of North Korea

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother - a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang - and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.

A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power

Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi) - South Korea's most famous actress - and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.

The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea

The Accusation is a deeply moving and eye-opening work of fiction that paints a powerful portrait of life under the North Korean regime. Set during the period of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il's leadership, the seven stories that make up The Accusation give voice to people living under this most bizarre and horrifying of dictatorships. The characters of these compelling stories come from a wide variety of backgrounds.

The Rape of Nanking

In December 1937, in the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the story of this atrocity- one of the worst in world history- continues to be denied by the Japanese government.

The Girl Who Escaped ISIS: This Is My Story

In the early summer of 2014, Farida Khalaf was a typical Yazidi teenager living with her parents and three brothers in her village in the mountains of Northern Iraq. In one horrific day, she lost everything: ISIS invaded her village, destroyed her family, and sold her into sexual slavery. The Girl Who Escaped ISIS is her incredible account of captivity and describes how she defied the odds and escaped a life of torture in order to share her story with the world.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age 12 to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his "brothers".

Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation

One of New Jersey’s seemingly innumerable quiet seaside towns, Toms River became the unlikely setting for a decades-long drama that culminated in 2001 with one of the largest legal settlements in the annals of toxic dumping. A town that would rather have been known for its Little League World Series champions ended up making history for an entirely different reason: a notorious cluster of childhood cancers scientifically linked to local air and water pollution.

Publisher's Summary

Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over 15 years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today - an Orwellian world in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, a country that is by choice not connected to the Internet, a society in which outward displays of affection are punished, and a police state that rewards informants and where an offhanded remark can send a citizen to the gulag for life. Demick's subjects - a middle-aged party loyalist and her rebellious daughter, an idealistic female doctor, an orphan, and two young lovers - all hail from the same provincial city in the farthest-flung northern reaches of the country. One by one, we witness the moments of revelation, when each realizes that they have been betrayed by the Fatherland and that their suffering is not a global condition but is uniquely theirs.

Nothing to Envy is the first book about North Korea to go deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and penetrate the mind-set of the average citizen. It is a groundbreaking and essential addition to the literature of totalitarianism.

I was a bit skeptic when I first chose this book to listen to but this book became one of those gems that I am glad I took a chance on. It does so many things so very right that I would simply suggest this book to anyone, literally to anyone.

Barbara Demick tells the story of like in North Korea and tell this story through interwoven true life experiences between a handfuls of individuals. The book in its entirety has a very anti-North Korea tone to it and if you are no careful you can easily be caught up into that sort of rhetoric. Keep in mind though that Barbara is simply telling things from persons who have lived and later defected from North Korea so there is some amount of distaste and bitterness from said persons. The author tries her best to not inject too much of such sentiment in her work but coming from her background as a reporter probably, she simply reported what the interviewees wish to have portrayed mostly.

All that being said even if you disagree with the tone of the book itself, it pokes enough in this direction to have you wanting to know more. It pokes at your curiosity in the right places and leaves you asking the right questions opening up this topic for discussion, driving one to actually want to do some research on this topic.

The narration suited well what was being portrayed. I do have some slight qualms with it as I thought the entire book seemed a bit over enunciated. You could hear her breathing in after every sentence it seems. Otherwise the mood and general tone was very much to my liking.

You would enjoy this book, at the time I listened to this (2013) it was current, impressively done, mixing the right amount of facts with an actual story and also highly thought provoking. One of the best books I have listened to in a while.

The author does an excellent job telling the tales of her protagonists wrapped in the totalitarian govt. The most shocking part of the book is when you hear about the measures that this imbecile leader takes to prove that he is GOD when he is not even human.

The things that people around the world take for granted are shown as luxuries in N Korea and sometimes unachievable for a regular citizen. At times, this book can be depressing but it is very informative and educational. The history of Koreas and the past, present of N Korea is very well described in this book.

The narrator was a little annoying at first with her breathing right in the mic. But I got used to it few hours in the book. This book is just too good so I didn't realize after a while how bad the narrator was. But Audible should really audition narrators before they are hired for the job.

Satellite pictures over Asia show between the bright lights of South Korea and China a big black hole. As I listened to this I kept having to remind myself that they were talking about the 1990's thru 2009.

In a time when South Korea leads the world in the production of cell phones, most North Koreans have never used a phone. A letter takes months to go a couple of hundred miles. Millions have starved while the government will not allow other countries to help. When they do the food goes to the military.

The government is suppose to provide everything: food, jobs, clothing, schooling, etc. The individual is not allowed to do anything to help out there situation. They are cut off from the rest of the world, no internet, no TV, no radio, no phone service. The country is surrounded by fences so the people can not escape. Say anything bad about the government and your neighbor hears, then you could be shot. Children do not celebrate there own birthdays, but they do celebrate the birthday of the leader.

This book follows the lives of several North Koreans who finally defected. You also get some history in how the country came to be and how the leaders became the leaders. You see how the people are brainwashed to believing that they live in the best county in the world and that China, USA and South Korea are the devils. This book was a major eye opener and a great read.

If you are a fan of Orwell's 1984, Hosseini 's A Thousand Splendid Suns, Or Buck's The Good Earth, you want to read this.

I'm not sure why I downloaded Nothing to Envy in the first place, but I am certainly glad I did. This book was enthralling and endlessly interesting. I have a picture in my mind of life in North Korea that has stuck with me. The author weaves stories together in a way that is complex without being confusing. Well worth the 12 hours - I was sorry when it ended.

"Ordinary lives," perhaps, but not ordinary people. The description of life in North Korea during the famine years is riveting, and the individual stories are deeply touching and ultimately inspiring. If this were a work of fiction, it would be a great novel. But as always, real life is more fascinating than fiction. This is journalism at its best.

This story of the lives of several ordinary North Korean citizens, put together from interviews over a period of several years with defectors who made it to South Korea, gives a grim and fascinating look at what it's really like inside this isolated, almost hermetically-sealed dictatorship. Although much of it is what you'd expect from the little we can see from outside -- the cult of personality around the "Dear Leader," the bankrupt economy that pumps money into nuclear weapons and the military while the citizens starve -- you really cannot appreciate just how impoverished the people of North Korea are until you read these stories. Particularly heartbreaking is the story of the famine that killed millions in the 1990s. Every person interviewed for this book was literally watching friends and family drop dead of starvation all around them, while the government continued denying a problem and forbidding them even to grow gardens. The book covers the time period up until late 2009, when Kim Jong Il is still in power, could easily live for decades yet, and there is no telling just how much longer this regime can continue. For North Koreans, the future seems bleak no matter what.

Not for the faint of heart. This book is like ice cold water pored into your warm morning bed. Like smelling salt to the nose. The inhumanity is so palpable it's like watching a holocaust film. You can only feel so deep then you go into the realm of the numb. The shameless irony of the North Korean regime feels like a kind of insanity. Like an insane class is running the country. If this were fiction it wouldn't be worth reading as it would be too fantastical. I have to recover from the first listening before listening again but listen again I must. Get a box of Kleenex and keep handy. Ironically, this may be the antidote for personal depression.

In such a hermetic regime as North Korea, it is nearly impossible to give a sense of what its citizens go through every day. In one sense I was just curious as to what things were like in the DPRK, and didn't care for the personal stories as much at first. But it makes the realization that their country is a bankrupt dictatorship by these characters even more powerful at the end. I don't think you would understand the forces keeping the North Koreans under tabs had you not read this story. It's a little bit like seeing a primitive culture discover technology in a first world nation. However, what makes this even more amazing is that these two peoples are from the same nation. The narrator is a good reader, but an annoying tick happens when she breathes in before each new sentence. You will soon forget about this phenomenon, but it's good to at least be aware of it.

George Orwell's "1984" could easily pass for a recent history of North Korea.<br/><br/>One often hears about North Korea and the incessant demands its fiery leaders make upon the rest of the world, but rarely do we get to glimpse inside the lives of those who suffer under their iron fist. "Nothing to Envy" provides us just that.<br/><br/>I expected the book to be different, but it was just right. It follows the lives of a few North Korean citizens, and provides insight into their struggles and daily lives. Many of these people eventually fled to South Korea, and the difference in the present and former lives is striking!<br/><br/>I highly recommend this book to anyone, not only will it give you a sense of appreciation for all of the freedoms you enjoy, but it will also provide a sad look into the lives of those who do not have those freedoms. It is a great mix of story and fact that anyone will appreciate.